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I went to an event on February 28 at the Ramada Inn in Pitt
Meadows, but I'm not entirely sure what it was. I can tell you with
certainty that the room was rented by Run
of River Power Inc., a company based in Delta, BC. At the
entrance, there were some friendly ladies taking the names and
addresses of the attendees. Inside the room were maps and pictures
about seven “run of river” or “independent power” projects
that Run of River Power wants to implement in the Upper Pitt River
watershed, north of Pitt Lake.

It was obvious to any of the 200 or so people who showed up that
the purpose of this event was to sell the attendees on the benefits
of these seven projects, which would put dams on most of the
tributaries of the Upper Pitt River. The attendees included employees
of two agencies of the Government of British Columbia, Parks BC and
the Environmental Assessment Office. Their stated purpose for being
there was to collect input from the public on what Run of River Power
proposes to do.

This time, it's from George Jonas instead of Terence Corcoran. Here's my response:

Editor, National Post;

With
the publication of If
you won't shoot, don't Taser
by George Jonas (Nov. 24), the public discussion of the relationship
of tobacco with death and disease has gone full circle.

People in Denial
about this relationship have put considerable energy in identifying
alternative causes for the many illnesses caused by tobacco; chlorine
in swimming pools, x-rays, increased radiation in the environment,
even “bad karma”. To relate just one of many cases I am familiar
with, Californian Mary Herrin chose to identify her doctor as the
cause of her two heart attacks, instead of her cigarette habit; Ms.
Herrin died at the age of 58.

What
Mr. Jonas has now given us, based on what he calls his own
“mini-inquiry”, is that the death of Robert
Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport
was caused by Dziekanski's cigarette habit, not by over-eager use of
tasers by the police. Jonas, however, was not willing to blame
Dziekanski for his own addiction to cigarettes. Nor was he willing to
blame the manufacturers of the cigarettes Dziekanski consumed, even
though those manufacturers lied to the public for many years about
the adverse effects of their products, including the addictive nature
of them.

Instead,
Jonas chose to blame “Big Nanny”.

This
is silly nonsense. No “nanny”, big or small, deprived Dziekanski
of the ability to communicate in either of Canada's official
languages. No nanny separated him from the relatives he was supposed
to meet at the airport. No nanny caused him to “create a
disturbance”, attracting the attention of the police. No nanny
caused the police to over-react.

George
Jonas may well be looking for a big nanny to change his diapers for
him. Good luck with finding a volunteer.

I had been planning for several days to put up something about the latest act of barbarism from Saudi Arabia, the sentencing of an anonymous woman known as the "Qatif Girl" to 200 lashes and six months in prison for being a rape victim. Much to my surprise, The Province beat me to it; they ran this column by Dan Gardner: A carbon tax is necessary to stop oil from bolstering a barbarous regime.

As Steven Colbert likes to say, only 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Why is the Bush Administration fighting terrorism in Iraq and Iran instead of Saudi Arabia? The Bush family's long-term friendship with the Saudi royal family has somthing to do with it, but Gardner came close to telling us that we help fund Al Qaeda every time we buy a tank of gas. More on this later, but the fact that a right-wing newspaper like The Province is catching on is definitely noteworthy.

I was inspired to write this by The
Creepy Similarities Between George W. Bush and Vlad the Impaler,
by Marc McDonald. This piece of writing made some interesting points,
but there's a fundamental problem with this comparison: although Vlad
the Impaler had many serious faults as a human being, nobody ever
accused him of being a coward.

It says elsewhere in this blog that George W. Bush is the Caligula
of the 21st century. I didn't come up with this idea on my
own; I got it from the Goddess of Talk Radio, Randi
Rhodes. Randi made this accusation while discussing the subject
of torture. The similarities go a lot further, and here's the list I
came up with. (Disclaimer: I'm not a hard-core student of ancient
Roman history; most of the information presented here about Caligula
came from Wikipedia.)

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (a.k.a.
Caligula)

George W. Bush

Believed that he was a god.

Convinced the Religious Right that he would represent their
interests, an even greater stretch.

Tried to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul.

Appointed Michael Brown, Judges and Stewards Commissioner of
the Arabian Horse Association, as Director of FEMA.

Ordered arbitrary arrests and confinement.

Suspended habeas corpus.

Sent troops on illogical military exercises.

Sent troops on illogical military exercises.

Used mercenaries for foreign wars as well as personal
bodyguards.

Used mercenaries for foreign wars.

Exhausted the treasury with political payments for support,
generosity and extravagance.

It took a waitress at a Maid-Rite Diner in central Iowa named Anita Esterday to expose all the silliness that passes for press coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign. Commenting on the media frenzy over whether Sen. Hilary Clinton did or did not leave a tip for her after having a meal at the Maid-Rite, she said, "You people are really nuts. There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on Nov. 1 than
former RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster has been appointed Chair of
the Advisory Council on National Security. Inkster has been a member
of this Council since it was established in 2005.

The remaining tobacco industry executives living in Canada will
probably be sleeping better at night knowing that Inkster is looking
out for them. The same is true for the members of the
tobacco-industry-funded Canadian Convenience Stores Association.
After all, how would Canadian convenience stores survive if they
didn't have cigarettes to sell?

Those of us who are not tobacco industry executives or convenience
store owners should start figuring out how to bring our own
bomb-sniffing dogs to the airport with us. Inkster has a history of
providing cover for the People in Charge that goes back to the
Mulroney government, when he decided not to execute search warrants
against Tory backbench MP Richard Grise during the 1988 election
campaign.